131 Less is More
Good evening kind souls. What a lucky way to start out my journal: sitting at the computer with a fancy cup of coffee (made by Matt) and a baked apple topped with cream and cinnamon syrup (made by Matt and Jacinta). You might ask, “What is going on? Did Matt take over the cooking because you’re easing off?” Not really, I just had a lucky day. He made pancakes for breakfast and later wanted to try out the one recipe he is putting in his book, submitted by an inspiring food lover. Originally Blessed is inspired by the concept that Adam’s supposed original “sin” in biting the apple was never wrong or sinful, but good and representative of humankind’s wonderful gift of intellect and our longing for knowledge. Thus, there is an apple on the front cover, hence the reason for the one recipe: baked apples. Lucky for me, an unexpected delicious dessert on a Sunday night.
The girls are both sleeping, it is silent. Our windows and doors are all shut tight, tighter than ever. Matt worked on the door seal this weekend, effective already. The sky is clear, the stars are amazing, the air is cold. I am feeling satisfied today, the house is tidy enough to give me space to breathe. The girls had a happy day, played with everyone in the house at some point. I had a few hours in the garden while the girls were on a walk to town with Matt, starting my day out in observation of plant life and soil life. There was silence, enough to contemplate tasks that need attention and learn from my mistakes. These few hours made the rest of the day feel so nice. Keith helped me prepare a neat garden bed in a sunny portion of the orchard garden, weeding, spreading newspaper, compost, blood and bone, lime and woodchips.
I usually make small paths and large beds, but Keith is helping me do the opposite for the sake of neatness, child accessibility, and less weeding. My initial garden plan was: “Throw in a bunch of seeds, what’s meant to come up will come up. Don’t plant in neat rows, or put too many of the same plant in one place for it will attract pests.” It turns out that it’s hard to walk through a messy garden, and hard to remember what was planted in each place when planning for crop rotation. So, my new goal is neatness, and remembering that less is more. I have to come up with a new plan because most of my recent plantings have been failures. The rain surely washed many of the seeds away. I’m not losing hope yet, don’t worry. There just isn’t much to eat in the garden right now. I did notice our first oranges starting to leave their green hue behind for a brighter shade of yellow. And not only have all eighty garlic cloves sprouted but it turns out that I left a few cloves in the ground last time I harvested garlic and all those have now sprouted. We should be set for the year in garlic, that feels good. The neat potato patch that Keith made with me is growing better than anything we have. He attributes their vitality to the comfrey leaves he placed at the base of each mound.
If only a few comfrey leaves could clear out Keith and George’s arteries. Not only is my step-dad George having surgery to unclog his arteries, but Keith will soon have his surgery too. As with George this is all new. Keith works like a horse and is finding it hard to slow down. His body is telling him he must, and I think he is finally listening. The girls have no idea, and surely aren’t helping him slow down, but they will learn. None of us are very good at encouraging Keith to slow down as we are so used to all of the work he does around the property. Ideally we could take on many of his tasks, but what would he do then? One hope is that he does enjoy watching old Western movies and listening to music on the computer. We’ll just have to keep the girls from begging him to play Hide and Seek and teach Evie how to sit down and read a book like her big sister. Hmm…..that’ll be tricky.
The girls love to play hiding games. Genevieve pretends to count now: “Nee New Nee New, Nee New” but has a hard time closing her eyes She acts surprised to find someone after openly peeking at the players hiding. The girls have a few garden ornaments in the shapes of mushrooms they like to hide from each other. Again, Evie will watch you hide the mushrooms, then go directly to them and exclaim, “AHHHHHH” as if she is surprised to have come across the purple and red cement mushrooms. She likes to be chased, whether because she has taken something forbidden or playing hide and seek. She’ll start a game by running away and hiding behind the door. You might not realize she has left the room or that you are playing a game until you walk through the door, look down and she exclaims, “AHHH,” meaning, “You found me!” There is seldom a dull moment these days.
The girls and I kept very busy this week, spending most of our time in town or walking to and fro. We went “ opp shopping,” we call thrift shops opportunity shops here. It’s lucky they have a toy section to occupy the girls as I tend to stay a long while. We found warm weather gear: curtains, pants, a music/jewelry box, cloth bags, shoes, etc…We took a break in between shops to picnic by the river and met a really friendly Maori guy from New Zealand who kept offering the girls hot chips and “devon” (bologna). Jacinta sat in awe staring at his niece, a local aboriginal girl, while she climbed the rock barefoot, and found what she wanted, an oyster. Usually the local aboriginal people don’t chat or even make eye contact with us, unless you ask a question or one of you has a pressing need. So obviously, I was feeling lucky that day! The next day I was even luckier. While pushing the pram up a steep hill before the Wilson Bridge, an obvious tourist excused himself for taking a photo of the girls and I, “I am sorry, I am from France.” Of course, French starved me happily stayed to chat a while.
Add to these two pleasant encounters a new friend from playgroup with a little girl 5 days younger than Jacinta, gentle, kind and also a doll-lover. Friday Jacinta had Lilly, Adelle and Douglas here to play and what a difference to have some new energy to balance out these girls, it was awesome! Good thing because Lilly gave Jacinta the cold shoulder and refused to even say hello the other day at pre-school. By the end of t he day, they were content and affectionate. Then on Thursday Jacinta decided to try out Lilly’s tricks, “I don’t like you,” she hesitantly told Lilly while they fought for space in a tube slide. She lightly tapped her on the leg seeing what it felt like to hit somebody. Lilly came back at her sweeter than ever, “But I love you.” They fight like little cats, but then cuddle like them also. Lilly seems to have thicker skin though. I suppose Jacinta is toughening up with her two roughest teachers: Lilly and Genevieve.
Evie will do whatever it takes to get what she wants. She spends a lot of time in pursuit of the big box of markers. She correctly sensed I was too busy to notice with guests in the house. After a long peaceful silence I belatedly checked on her, finding her covered in ink with every single lid off each of the 60 markers. As you can imagine, she was in heaven. I should win the careless mother award because just an hour later we found she and Henry (also one year old ) with Jacinta’s entire bead box up-ended, and again in perfect bliss, smiling from ear to ear. I doubted she’d had time to swallow any, but later found seven in her diaper, beautifully digested. Anissa cleaned them all up, reminding herself why she has not bought Lilly any beads.
Messes, messes. As I am cooking less and playing more, the messes are easier to clean. Jacinta actually wants to help cook now, there is a sign of it becoming a novelty. The other day we made cinnamon rolls for playgroup, Jacinta’s favourite thing to cook. Being out all the time makes more mess though. I come home with bags of stuff and then rush to throw dinner together. We have good fun-filled days with the house terribly trashed by the time the girls go to bed. In the evenings I have been cleaning, but with the added bonus of a book tape, what a great concept. I have been listening to Chocolat and either cleaning or knitting. That evening alone time is essential. Saturday night I fell asleep with Jacinta at 8pm, waking at midnight in a grumpy mood. It may have been that the house was still trashed and that I had wasted my only solitude. So I woke up, cleaned the house and listened to the Ipod. After three episodes of Prairie Home Companion’s Lake Woebegone, a song by Matt Watroba popped up on shuffle. Matt Watroba hosted the Folks Like Us music program on public Detroit radio fro almost 20 years. His music, as it turns out, brought tears to my eyes. It brought back memories of listening to great live music, black and white people coming together in song, the civil rights movement, friends from Detroit, life before children, and my family. Of course my mind wandered to how far away I am now, how permanent it seems when you plant over 20 trees and build your own house, and to how American I really am. Eventually I sat down and called my sister. While knitting in the beautiful silence I was able to really talk with my sister for over an hour. Although I went to bed at 3am, I woke up refreshed. This is what I needed.
What Matt needed was a job, and voila, it came. It has been three full weeks now and he is starting to feel more knowledgeable. He has his own clients now, people to whom he is responsible for finding them in home care to enable them to recover well. From cleaning services to cooking services, he works out the schedule. The other day he came home happy, having had the chance to help out a extraordinarily lovely elderly couple that day. He takes the bus a few times a week. The girls sometimes come along to pick him up at night from the bus stop. Jacinta is so excited about seeing the bus and honking at Matt to let him know we are there. Unfortunately, due to my inevitable lateness, she hasn’t seen the bus yet and honks at Matt once he is already in the car, startling passers-by.
The other day while walking in town, Jacinta was thinking about Matt. She said, “When daddy gets home…I am going to ask him to hang me upside-down.” She is starting to see the weekends and her time with Matt as really special. Matt too, really enjoys the weekends. He worked on the fireplace, sealing up leaks that would make it less efficient. Jacinta helped in her own way. Friday night we had a little fire in it outside. Matt will install it sometime in the next few weeks. As he works on the fireplace, my contribution to warmth will be curtains. Wish me luck in the upcoming inevitable frustration with sewing. There will be a warm light at the end of the tunnel.
Take care y’all. For the moment, the chill in the air is too much and all I can do is go to bed. Enjoy the spring!
Peace,
Shana
The girls are both sleeping, it is silent. Our windows and doors are all shut tight, tighter than ever. Matt worked on the door seal this weekend, effective already. The sky is clear, the stars are amazing, the air is cold. I am feeling satisfied today, the house is tidy enough to give me space to breathe. The girls had a happy day, played with everyone in the house at some point. I had a few hours in the garden while the girls were on a walk to town with Matt, starting my day out in observation of plant life and soil life. There was silence, enough to contemplate tasks that need attention and learn from my mistakes. These few hours made the rest of the day feel so nice. Keith helped me prepare a neat garden bed in a sunny portion of the orchard garden, weeding, spreading newspaper, compost, blood and bone, lime and woodchips.
I usually make small paths and large beds, but Keith is helping me do the opposite for the sake of neatness, child accessibility, and less weeding. My initial garden plan was: “Throw in a bunch of seeds, what’s meant to come up will come up. Don’t plant in neat rows, or put too many of the same plant in one place for it will attract pests.” It turns out that it’s hard to walk through a messy garden, and hard to remember what was planted in each place when planning for crop rotation. So, my new goal is neatness, and remembering that less is more. I have to come up with a new plan because most of my recent plantings have been failures. The rain surely washed many of the seeds away. I’m not losing hope yet, don’t worry. There just isn’t much to eat in the garden right now. I did notice our first oranges starting to leave their green hue behind for a brighter shade of yellow. And not only have all eighty garlic cloves sprouted but it turns out that I left a few cloves in the ground last time I harvested garlic and all those have now sprouted. We should be set for the year in garlic, that feels good. The neat potato patch that Keith made with me is growing better than anything we have. He attributes their vitality to the comfrey leaves he placed at the base of each mound.
If only a few comfrey leaves could clear out Keith and George’s arteries. Not only is my step-dad George having surgery to unclog his arteries, but Keith will soon have his surgery too. As with George this is all new. Keith works like a horse and is finding it hard to slow down. His body is telling him he must, and I think he is finally listening. The girls have no idea, and surely aren’t helping him slow down, but they will learn. None of us are very good at encouraging Keith to slow down as we are so used to all of the work he does around the property. Ideally we could take on many of his tasks, but what would he do then? One hope is that he does enjoy watching old Western movies and listening to music on the computer. We’ll just have to keep the girls from begging him to play Hide and Seek and teach Evie how to sit down and read a book like her big sister. Hmm…..that’ll be tricky.
The girls love to play hiding games. Genevieve pretends to count now: “Nee New Nee New, Nee New” but has a hard time closing her eyes She acts surprised to find someone after openly peeking at the players hiding. The girls have a few garden ornaments in the shapes of mushrooms they like to hide from each other. Again, Evie will watch you hide the mushrooms, then go directly to them and exclaim, “AHHHHHH” as if she is surprised to have come across the purple and red cement mushrooms. She likes to be chased, whether because she has taken something forbidden or playing hide and seek. She’ll start a game by running away and hiding behind the door. You might not realize she has left the room or that you are playing a game until you walk through the door, look down and she exclaims, “AHHH,” meaning, “You found me!” There is seldom a dull moment these days.
The girls and I kept very busy this week, spending most of our time in town or walking to and fro. We went “ opp shopping,” we call thrift shops opportunity shops here. It’s lucky they have a toy section to occupy the girls as I tend to stay a long while. We found warm weather gear: curtains, pants, a music/jewelry box, cloth bags, shoes, etc…We took a break in between shops to picnic by the river and met a really friendly Maori guy from New Zealand who kept offering the girls hot chips and “devon” (bologna). Jacinta sat in awe staring at his niece, a local aboriginal girl, while she climbed the rock barefoot, and found what she wanted, an oyster. Usually the local aboriginal people don’t chat or even make eye contact with us, unless you ask a question or one of you has a pressing need. So obviously, I was feeling lucky that day! The next day I was even luckier. While pushing the pram up a steep hill before the Wilson Bridge, an obvious tourist excused himself for taking a photo of the girls and I, “I am sorry, I am from France.” Of course, French starved me happily stayed to chat a while.
Add to these two pleasant encounters a new friend from playgroup with a little girl 5 days younger than Jacinta, gentle, kind and also a doll-lover. Friday Jacinta had Lilly, Adelle and Douglas here to play and what a difference to have some new energy to balance out these girls, it was awesome! Good thing because Lilly gave Jacinta the cold shoulder and refused to even say hello the other day at pre-school. By the end of t he day, they were content and affectionate. Then on Thursday Jacinta decided to try out Lilly’s tricks, “I don’t like you,” she hesitantly told Lilly while they fought for space in a tube slide. She lightly tapped her on the leg seeing what it felt like to hit somebody. Lilly came back at her sweeter than ever, “But I love you.” They fight like little cats, but then cuddle like them also. Lilly seems to have thicker skin though. I suppose Jacinta is toughening up with her two roughest teachers: Lilly and Genevieve.
Evie will do whatever it takes to get what she wants. She spends a lot of time in pursuit of the big box of markers. She correctly sensed I was too busy to notice with guests in the house. After a long peaceful silence I belatedly checked on her, finding her covered in ink with every single lid off each of the 60 markers. As you can imagine, she was in heaven. I should win the careless mother award because just an hour later we found she and Henry (also one year old ) with Jacinta’s entire bead box up-ended, and again in perfect bliss, smiling from ear to ear. I doubted she’d had time to swallow any, but later found seven in her diaper, beautifully digested. Anissa cleaned them all up, reminding herself why she has not bought Lilly any beads.
Messes, messes. As I am cooking less and playing more, the messes are easier to clean. Jacinta actually wants to help cook now, there is a sign of it becoming a novelty. The other day we made cinnamon rolls for playgroup, Jacinta’s favourite thing to cook. Being out all the time makes more mess though. I come home with bags of stuff and then rush to throw dinner together. We have good fun-filled days with the house terribly trashed by the time the girls go to bed. In the evenings I have been cleaning, but with the added bonus of a book tape, what a great concept. I have been listening to Chocolat and either cleaning or knitting. That evening alone time is essential. Saturday night I fell asleep with Jacinta at 8pm, waking at midnight in a grumpy mood. It may have been that the house was still trashed and that I had wasted my only solitude. So I woke up, cleaned the house and listened to the Ipod. After three episodes of Prairie Home Companion’s Lake Woebegone, a song by Matt Watroba popped up on shuffle. Matt Watroba hosted the Folks Like Us music program on public Detroit radio fro almost 20 years. His music, as it turns out, brought tears to my eyes. It brought back memories of listening to great live music, black and white people coming together in song, the civil rights movement, friends from Detroit, life before children, and my family. Of course my mind wandered to how far away I am now, how permanent it seems when you plant over 20 trees and build your own house, and to how American I really am. Eventually I sat down and called my sister. While knitting in the beautiful silence I was able to really talk with my sister for over an hour. Although I went to bed at 3am, I woke up refreshed. This is what I needed.
What Matt needed was a job, and voila, it came. It has been three full weeks now and he is starting to feel more knowledgeable. He has his own clients now, people to whom he is responsible for finding them in home care to enable them to recover well. From cleaning services to cooking services, he works out the schedule. The other day he came home happy, having had the chance to help out a extraordinarily lovely elderly couple that day. He takes the bus a few times a week. The girls sometimes come along to pick him up at night from the bus stop. Jacinta is so excited about seeing the bus and honking at Matt to let him know we are there. Unfortunately, due to my inevitable lateness, she hasn’t seen the bus yet and honks at Matt once he is already in the car, startling passers-by.
The other day while walking in town, Jacinta was thinking about Matt. She said, “When daddy gets home…I am going to ask him to hang me upside-down.” She is starting to see the weekends and her time with Matt as really special. Matt too, really enjoys the weekends. He worked on the fireplace, sealing up leaks that would make it less efficient. Jacinta helped in her own way. Friday night we had a little fire in it outside. Matt will install it sometime in the next few weeks. As he works on the fireplace, my contribution to warmth will be curtains. Wish me luck in the upcoming inevitable frustration with sewing. There will be a warm light at the end of the tunnel.
Take care y’all. For the moment, the chill in the air is too much and all I can do is go to bed. Enjoy the spring!
Peace,
Shana
posted by Matt & Shana & Jacinta & Genevieve Henry at
10:31 PM
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